Sir Ian Gilmour, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, visited Gibraltar on 17 and 18 July 1979 in order to convey the new Conservative Government's views directly to the Gibraltarians. He said that the Government considered the Spanish restrictions to be unjustifiable, that it was inconceivable that the frontier should remain closed in an enlarged European Community, and described the restrictions as an act of hostility.

Thus far the British Government had maintained that Britain would fully support Spain's application for membership of the European Community, and that the Gibraltar dispute was irrelevant to Britain's attitude. But when a member of the British Government linked the two as Sir Ian did, suspicions arose in the minds of Spaniards as to whether there might not be some connection being made between the two issues, especially as the EC negotiations frequently ran into opposition from Britain on the question of fishing.

Nevertheless, Spain's negotiations to join the EC continued, while those on Gibraltar did not. Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, met his Spanish counterpart Sr Oreja in New York on 24 September during the General Assembly of the UN, but nothing of substance emerged.

Pressure on the Spanish Government to shift the logjam on negotiations came from a new quarter in October 1979. A 24-hour general strike was called in La Línea for 9 October to protest against the Government's failure to compensate the Campo region for the economic hardship it had suffered over the past ten years through the closure of the frontier. Unemployment in La Linea currently affected some 4,000 workers, representing between 20% and 25% of the active workforce.